Despite hundreds of billions in subsidies, Germany’s birth rate continues to fall
A study commissioned by the German government has reached a damning verdict on the country’s efforts to boost its low birth rate, saying billions of euros are being wasted on complex benefits and tax breaks that are largely ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.
Europe’s largest economy spends some €200 billion ($270 billion) on promoting children and families per year — that’s almost two-thirds of the federal budget. But its birth rate, at 1.39 births per woman aged 15 to 49, remains among the lowest in Europe and compares with an Office of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 1.74.
The number of births in Germany has fallen to a record low. It was just 663,000 in 2011, 72,000 fewer than a decade earlier.
The German government ordered a detailed cost-benefit study of its family policies five years ago. The panel of experts led by Basel-based consultancy Prognos has completed a 66-page interim report that SPIEGEL has seen.
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Try this! Get rid of OLD AGE SUBSIDIZATION and make people get their old age security from their children or by begging neighbors and other local people for a subsidy for their old age?
Just an idea, but it seems to me that anywhere you subsidize people with other people’s children, having children becomes a burden that a few other subsidies never can out incentivize.
astonerii on February 6, 2013 at 7:06 PM
Dear conservatives:
I present this as Exhibit B why subsidizing reproduction is a bad idea.
Exhibit A being the Democrat minority-welfare bloc it has produced.
The next time you want to hyperventilate about there not being enough babies (meaning not enough taxpaying productive married couples having babies, the Democrat voters are having plenty), kindly suggest something BESIDES this long-failed policy.
MelonCollie on February 6, 2013 at 7:07 PM
I should have lived in Germany. US government punishes us poor suckers raising the next generation of suckers to prop up the SS/Medicare Ponzi Scheme.
besser tot als rot on February 6, 2013 at 7:10 PM
Our current system is f**ked up in two major ways:
1. It robs everyone who doesn’t or can’t have children in order to fund everyone who does, which is an unwarranted insult. Those who do have children have their own money go round-robin through the government for pennies to ‘trickle down’ back to them. As usual, they’d be better off if we deep-sixed subsidies and let people keep their own money.
2. The people getting the most money as a group are on welfare with multiple kids by as many fathers. The 1950′s this is not. All the abstinence programs, anti-crime programs, and welfare-workfare programs (to name a few things) will not make a DENT until we quit paying them for their irresponsibility.
MelonCollie on February 6, 2013 at 7:11 PM
I found this bit amusing. Yeah. The German moms and dads combined probably work less hours per year than I do. And. Yeah. I earn all the money. And pay an obscene amount of taxes. And mom stays at home (and home schools) the kids.
besser tot als rot on February 6, 2013 at 7:12 PM
Looking at my options I can either:
Have children while paying for someone else’ old age benefits spending huge amounts of effort teaching them, huge amounts of resources keeping them fed, clothed and housed as well as educated denying myself time, money and freedom. Then in old age watch as my children are raped of their earnings and made incapable of helping anyone else, including me.
Not have children, live the high life on my earnings going only for myself with the only outlays being for other old people. Then when I get older live off the suckers children’s labors while voting for more and more money to be taken for my own benefit.
astonerii on February 6, 2013 at 7:13 PM
Germany should copy whatever Russia is doing, their birthrate is rising rapidly.
Jon0815 on February 6, 2013 at 7:13 PM
I feel your pain. SS is a liberal program to the core that they disguised in “traditional family” garb. Its very premise ignores basic mathematics (sound familiar?) and it goes downhill from there.
MelonCollie on February 6, 2013 at 7:13 PM
Subsidies?
How do I sign up?
nukemhill on February 6, 2013 at 7:13 PM
Not totally accurate, but I understand the anger. And that’s still a pretty brutal indictment of our system.
MelonCollie on February 6, 2013 at 7:14 PM
I don’t have sh*t trickle back down to me. I have 6 kids and haven’t gotten a penny in child tax credit in years. Another example of how the government only wants kids born of people who suckle on the teat of government.
besser tot als rot on February 6, 2013 at 7:16 PM
Well, at least they won’t be needing any more lebensraum.
Mark1971 on February 6, 2013 at 7:17 PM
Have kids. And arm them to the teeth so they can tell these pinkos to f-off when they’re too old to do anything about it. That’s my plan.
besser tot als rot on February 6, 2013 at 7:20 PM
That would help.
Even better:
Get rid of abortion.
itsnotaboutme on February 6, 2013 at 7:20 PM
Egg-frigging-zactly! You confirm my point to a T! The liberals have entirely suborned the system in order to bribe themselves an unbeatable voting bloc and they’ve just about done it!
If all your ‘taxpayer-funded’ ‘benefits’ for children went away (minus maybe vouchers for school) and your tax rate decreased accordingly, you’d be amazed at how much more money you’d have in your pocket.
This is precisely what I am trying to point out to childed conservatives: the system is not in your favor at all because you think you deserve tax breaks/benefits for reproducing, and in fact it is HARMFUL to you.
MelonCollie on February 6, 2013 at 7:21 PM
Gee, it’s almost as if social engineering is a complete waste of time and money.
Walter Sobchak on February 6, 2013 at 7:21 PM
Vodka Goggles.
trigon on February 6, 2013 at 7:21 PM
More robots!!!
albill on February 6, 2013 at 7:23 PM
You can probably tax the hell out of robots and they won’t care.
besser tot als rot on February 6, 2013 at 7:24 PM
Dingdingding.
You know what’s so sad about that? Their heroic consumption of vodka is a direct carryover from the Commie days, when the Marxist monsters soothed their terror with subsidized liquor. “Bread and circuses”, USSR style.
They might make you work twelve hours in a broom factory with a quota hanging over your head and go home to a miserable shack of an apartment, but by golly you could toast Lenin until you were a pickled herring for just a few rubles!
MelonCollie on February 6, 2013 at 7:25 PM
Hopefully my kids will be the ones who rise up and fight back, we’re certainly trying to raise them that way.
Bishop on February 6, 2013 at 7:31 PM
Well I’m not certain fewer German people is a bad thing.
As for the United States, motherhood has been devalued in popular culture. There was a skank on MSNBC that said Ann Romney hadn’t worked a day in her life because she stayed him and raised a family. Mothers have to be put back on a pedestal for the future of the country.
Ted Torgerson on February 6, 2013 at 7:49 PM
Less mouths to feed. Terrible. The only reason why the German government, or any government, care about low birth rates, is that they need people to work to support the old folks as well as needing more consumers for a consumer-based economy. The whole thing is a house of cards. And as soon as one generation cuts back on the pregnancy thing, the whole ponzi scheme collapses.
Well, that’s just too bad. Socialism can only work as a ponzi scheme and to keep a ponzi scheme going you need an endless supply of new people. Interrupt that supply, and socialism will die.
keep the change on February 6, 2013 at 8:34 PM
Russia’s birthrate is continuing to fall too.
SC.Charlie on February 6, 2013 at 8:37 PM
German people are the only thing propping up Europe at this point.
Punchenko on February 6, 2013 at 9:04 PM
Holy cow, you of all people hit the nail on the head with a 10-pound sledgehammer.
Heck just look at Social ‘Security’: the same year the 50′s baby boom ended, it was on a one-way road to failure. You cannot have an infinite increase of ANYTHING, much less population. And to count on that is such a laughable folly it could only come from an unholy union of ultra-rightwing fantasy and socialist policymakers.
MelonCollie on February 7, 2013 at 9:15 AM